By the late 50's a pharmacist made a comfortable income. Not quite a doctor, but more than a RN nurse or a med tech. By the mid to late 70's, he more often worked for a chain, or in a grocery/KMart type pharmacy and his income was pretty much frozen, relative to other professions. Frankly I don't know where they stand today. Are they at six digits yet? Close but probably not in most instances. Today, everything is pre-made, the process is streamlined, techs do all the work; and the pharmacist is most important strictly for his legal responsibility, little else.

Good film, Iowa College style. Covers the topic well (as it sat in 1946).

Made back in 1946, this career exploration film for high school students is well done. Both my father and mother were registered pharmacists and had a store in Brooklyn, New York for many years. They really enjoyed the profession. My dad also taught Pharmaceutical Latin (now no longer used) at Columbia University and wrote a text book on the subject.

Spent 2 years in Pharm school and decided that if I was gonna have to go through all those grueling courses like physical chemistry, etc., I might just as well aim for something higher up the food chain.

I saw rather intelligent people flunk out even before the big chemistry and pharmacy courses had started. Organic chemistry alone did a few in. Pharmaceutical law was a big pain in the butt when you had hourlies in physics organic and anatomy all in the same week. When I attended, you took those science courses with the pre-med students - no watered down courses there.

Bottom line...a good field but you better be tops at math and science, find chemistry an easy and intriguing subject, as well as being an accuracy freak. And they were right about one thing...girls DO make good pharmacists.

Good film. I especially liked all those boxes of seegars in that cabinet...and the big red rubber douche bag hanging up behind that counter was so nostalgic.

This film is a good illustration of how some things in the profession have stayed the same, like how a compounding pharmacy works. However, compounding Rxs is only a small part of today's practice. Today's pharmacists also have the same responsibility to provide the correct medication to their patients, although at a MUCH larger scale. The video mentions that around 300 million prescriptions were filled each year (1945). Pretty big number, but not even close to today's annual fill of 3.4 BILLION (2007). Holy cow. That info should prompt all sorts of questions...

While watching this filn, I got the distinction that being a pharmacist in "the older days" seemed to be a lot harder then it is now. I mean, back then, they were mixing up chemicals in the back. Something I don't think the Pharmacy people do anymore.. Mind you, I've never BEEN back there.. and the counters are so high.. hmm.. anyways, another thing that I noticed, while the narrator DOES say that the pharmacist may have other tasks (especially in smaller stores) such as selling other merchandise, they forgot one thing, soda jerking! Gosh darn it. While the druggists do sell other stuff, I didn't see any pornography. Sorry George.